You Don't Know Me
by foxredwinter
Summary: You don’t know me, but you know why I am writing.
1. Unknown

_Disclaimer: I own nothing besides the worry behind this story._

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You don't know me, but you know why I am writing. At most, I may someday be an endnote in her favorite book. Someday, if she wins. Otherwise, from what she has said, there may not be a someday for Muggles like me.

She should be living the life of a normal teenager. Balancing studies, boys, petty rivalries, and learning more about who she is. Instead she is learning how to battle, balancing the fate of two worlds while trying to be all things to all people.

You don't know me. I was nearly ten when she was born. I was studying for a year in America when she left for Hogwarts. I finished school while she was in her second year. I began teaching in Asia when she played with time and befriended a criminal. For the past six years and a half years I have learned of my sister's life through letters. I am her journal, instead of noting her life in the pages of a book; she began writing to me in her second year. When she told me why she decided to burn her journal and begin such a voluminous correspondence, the overprotective elder sister in me also wished to adopt Ginny.

By the standards of my friends and family I have led a full life. I have traveled and studied the world over. I have created a life for me in a strange land. I am respected by my students, my peers, and my superiors. As I continue to teach and study at the university here, I can see a path before me of further adventures and recognition.

They don't know me. As I go through the motions of my classes, whether teaching or studying, they don't know I worry about a sister about to begin her seventh year of school in a school for witches and wizards. As I commute on the train each day, the young man next to me does not know I worry about a sister who is about to leave on a hunt for evil embodied in Horocruxes. As I buy my dinner and a few bandages, I always was the klutzy one; the clerk does not know I worry for a sister who may be killed.

Each day I go about my business. Each night I am haunted by the dreams. I should not call them my dreams. I see flashes of a life, more foreign than any I have yet encountered. Apparently, though separated by a decade of life and half the globe's circumference, my sister and I share a close bond. I know somewhere along the way, she studied to find a way to strengthen this bond. She always was the most stubborn, brilliant, and utterly infuriating sister I could ever hope to have. When I suddenly began having these dreams a few years ago, they were followed a few days later by a letter explaining.

No one knows me. Hermione never mentions my name to anyone in her world. She has convinced our parents to give her all the photos that include me and to hide all mementos of my life in some secret place. Somehow our letters are kept secret. She fears for my life. I fear for hers.

No one knows me. So here I sit, staring out the window at the foreign city. While I stand out against the backdrop of the native people, there are enough westerners studying, working, and visiting that I merely am another stranger. I remain aloof towards most people. How can I tell them that I daily fear for a sister's death? A sister I have not seen in seven years. A sister who can levitate a book or command an object to come to her from the other side of the building. A sister who is destined to be a triumphant hero or a tragic casualty.

No one knows me. But her. She knows me. In our secret letters we plan and share our most treasured hopes. When the war is over we will travel together. I will take a sabbatical and she will flee the notoriety. We will take our backpacks and see the world together. When she is safe and evil is vanquished we will finally be able to be sisters. We will laugh, cry, joke, talk for endless hours, and do all that which we have been denied.

No one knows me. But there is a mechanism in place. A few months ago, when she first told me that she would be hunting down the bits of evil, she told me something which causes me to wake up in sweat at night. While normally one would expect parents to be notified first, I am the one that will be told if she is injured or worse. She told me that an owl would come bearing a letter from a Ministry. Whenever I hear a rush of wind, the rustle of leaves, a peculiar noise on my window sill, my heart stops for a moment as my stomach clenches. I hesitate each time I hear the beat of wings or someone pointing upwards. How do you explain that to someone?

You don't know me. I am the unknown sister of the young woman you admire. I am just a Muggle who has a fear of owls and has the most vivid dreams. I am just a sister waiting for the one I love most in the world to go to war. I am just waiting and praying.

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_AN: Yes, yes, not my usual. May or may not have additions. But as a sister who is immensely worried for her brother who is about to go to war and who lives in fear of that phone call or the knock of an officer..._


	2. Anonymity

_A.N. As always, I do not own Harry Potter. There are vague references to Book 7. Very vague and more conjectures of the narrator's voice. Afterall, she really doesn't know what is going on any more than we know her._

_I am also somewhat in shock that this in theory could go with the idea that the great JKR used with Hermione's parents in DH. Convenient for my purposes...meanwhile, praying that our world could find the peace that our favorite wizarding world has found._

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The anonymity of the Internet is such that I can go to a café, where the sign is in a language three years ago I could not read. I can sit down to a beverage I never would have dreamed of drinking and bring up the British news. BBC, International Herald, even the New York Times offer me the only links to my sister. 

The anonymity would merely show someone who was curious as to the happenings in the British Isles. Perhaps the anonymity would slip as the pattern came up that I searched through to find the odd, unexplained occurrences. I dwelled longer over articles that showed pictures of the country side. I would pull up Google maps and zoom in to a corner of the country and stare at a patch of forest, a field, a stream. And then just as suddenly I would close the browser, log off, and flee the café.

A few days later, I would anonymously drift into another café.

I wonder, as I read an article about an unsolved homicide if some power beyond my comprehension was at play. I wonder, as I see an advertisement for a dental agency whether my parents fare well. I wonder, as I read of a bridge collapse whether my sister was cowering under it.

In anonymity I sip my drink; I offer a prayer to whatever God may choose to hear me. In this land the gods are different; the prayers are intoned with harmonies of great comfort. I wonder whether the God I know hears me in this land; hears my prayers for my sister in another world.

I wonder, as I stare at a patch of my home's earth whether my sister slept there. I wonder, as I look at a map whether that is where her school stands. I wonder, as I look at a bare field, whether that is where the school stood.

I wonder, as I sip my drink whether the day will come when my dreams are nothing more than a mixture of a spicy dish from dinner and my infatuation with a movie star. I wonder, will I some day soon sit across from my sister discussing the news instead of knowing she is making the news. I wonder, when will the sadness that is not my own be lifted. I wonder, whether it will be grief or joy that descends in its place

The anonymity is a comfort. If I was known I would have to explain my drawn look as more than homesickness or a discomfort from something I ate. If I was known, I would have to answer questions. If I was known, I would have to accept that this was not a dream, a story written to amuse or educate.

The anonymity is a curse. If I was known, I could seek comfort. If I was known, the monks chanting could chant the prayers I offer in silence. If I was known, I could ask questions. If I was known, I could do something, anything.

The anonymity is a burden I was asked to bear. My sister who bears so much and who asks so little made this one request. There is one who can remove my anonymity. Until she conquers the darkness, in anonymous blankness I shall dwell. Until she comes to claim me, to give me my identity, I will hold to my promise.

I wait in anonymity.

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_Author's Request. Sorry, I really do hate all these notes, however given some comments left in reviews I ask that you please be respectful of the choices my brother has made and my motives for writing this story. It is not social commentary on present situations. It is fanfiction spurred by a what if senario that resonates with my worries. Leave your comments on the story, leave your best wishes, they are more than appreciated. However, if you wish to leave color commentary on the 'Muggle World,' I ask that you find somewhere else. Trust me, I've heard it before and it does not help me to deal with the realities of my life. In humble thanks, Foxredwinter._


	3. Remember

You can know someone so well, be able to understand all their private jokes and subtle expressions. You can know why they dislike eggs and adore blue icing. You can know all this and still be a stranger to them.

She came home. And she was whole. Whole in body. Her life has gone on and our family is reunited. Of sorts.

She has a life and I sense I am not completely a part of it. She has a whole year of which she never speaks. Never the slightest allusion to it. Oh, once in a very great while when she is overtired or enjoys a bit too much champagne on New Years do you see a brief shadow. The moment at her wedding that remembered the fallen.

Within that shadow is an immense cavern. I can only guess what lies within. Yes, the events of that year are well chronicled. The destruction, death, doubts, and fear. All well prepared for history to study and students to dread taking examinations of in the years to come.

I would like to think she doesn't see my own shadow. She does not know the nights I laid awake, feeling like the worst has happened. Those nights when I let the darkness of the night overtake my heart. I do not speak of those fears or those long dark nights. I do not tell her I played a million scenarios of how I would find our parents. I do not tell her of how I would end up crying myself to sleep because I could not imagine having to tell our mother that her daughter was dead.

There is little I can do to protect my sister; I am the first to admit she is so very capable of caring for herself. But I will do this, she will never know of these hauntings. She will not know of my shadows.

Knowing the facts is so very different than knowing there is infinitely more to tell. Knowing that those tales will never be told.

I can see it when she sits with her friends, those who were there. Moments come, innocuous days to the rest of the world. Moments come when they suddenly will still. One eye catches another's and their conversation stops. What that moment remembers, what that eye is reliving, I will never know.

But we move on.

She has a life and it is the sort of life an older sister wishes for her sister. A happy relationship, a productive career, caring friends, and the peace that is most profoundly deserved.

As time moves on, those who were never in the confusion of battle, never saw the lights nor smelled the fear, forget. They forget that there are scars that are not seen yet never heal. There are lives that while not lost, are never the same. They forget that these people, then barely more than children, gave all they had to do good. And these children did not return with all that they gave. They left behind innocence and childhood. They became heroes. But it is so easy to call someone a hero; it dismisses their humanity. For a hero is larger than life. My sister became a news story. Then a subject for books. Now she can walk the street without notice. That is a blessing, but it is also a curse. For my sister and all those who survived, they still ache, still mourn, still deserve and require our compassion and honor.

While I now am back home, it is not a home that I nor my sister remember from our childhood. Rather, perhaps that home does not remember us. We are different now. We are changed. It is the nature of these times.

Now while I write in anonymity, it is with a resolve that somehow the words, the actions, the life I live will somehow make things just a bit better. Make it a bit more possible that two sisters may not have to be separated by desperation, war, and the shadow of what will never be told.


End file.
